Color Setting??

[sydneysnana]

In the book Photoshop Elements for Digital Photographer 3,Scott Kelby goes over the Color Settings, suggesting Full Color Management. The options are different in 5 and I'm not sure which to choose. Version 3 options are "No Color Management, Limited Color Management and Full Color Management". Version 5 are "No Color Management, Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens, Always Optimize for Printing, Allow Me to Choose".

thanks
Michelle

[OFD678]

Both Deke and Scott's books recomends "optimize for printing"
But a few others like no color management.

Brent

[Richard Lynch]

I would suggest NOT using Full Color Management. It sounds good but it is the wrong choice for most users. I would suggest using Limited Color Management or No Color Management in Elements 3 (I think there were issues with Limited Color Management in Elements 3), and Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens in Elements 4 and 5. The point is to use an sRGB workflow which is more generally reliable.

Don't get me wrong, either workflow can potentially work, but FCM is an AdobeRGB workflow which can produce rotten prints under some circumstances (where a service fails to recognize the AdobeRGB profile). It can also affect image uploads (the result in both cases is sometimes severe desaturation). You'll have to bother a lot more with color management, make tests, etc. AdobeRGB has colors you can't see on your monitor, so there is no way to correct them reliably.

In all Adobe RGB sounds like a good idea, but the reality of it is that it is not as good as it sounds, and requires more effort to maintain. Though I don't usually go for the easy solution, sRGB just makes better global sense.

[gidon]

"Optimise for printing" in Elements 5 still honours any sRGB profile which most cameras embed anyway. For me the main advantage is for printing on my home printer my RAW files which will only open as aRGB if this above colour mgt setting is chosen. My pocket camera and the JPEG from my RAW + JPEG off my DSLR are set as sRGB (well no choice on the pocket camera) and that does makes things a lot easier for online printing and sharing with others. But there's no problem editing these files with above setting chosen - you'll still be working in sRGB.
Another reason for me in choosing FCM is that otherwise Organizer won't display my aRGB files correctly. It displays everything sRGB unless you select FCM. So your aRGB jpg's will look washed out.
If you don't have the option for aRGB off any of your cameras then you might as well choose sRGB as your working space.
Sorry a bit of a ramble,
Hope it makes some sense.
Cheers
Gidon